Tags

New York Times, 16 May 2018 - After years of halting steps, top prosecutors and elected officials in New York City on Tuesday made a sudden dash toward ending many of the marijuana arrests that for decades have entangled mostly black and Hispanic people. The plans, still unwritten and under negotiation, will rise or fall […]

New York Times, 15 May 2018 - Microdosing is hot. If you haven't heard - but you probably have, from reports of its use at Silicon Valley workplaces, from Ayelet Waldman's memoir "A Really Good Day," from dozens of news stories - to microdose is to take small amounts of LSD, which generate "subperceptual" effects […]

New York Times, 15 May 2018 - The district attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn are weighing plans to stop prosecuting the vast majority of people arrested on marijuana charges, potentially curbing the consequences of a law that in New York City is enforced most heavily against black and Hispanic people. The Brooklyn district attorney's office, […]

@DrugSense

The Drug Truth Network (DTN) is a media production organization dedicated to exposing the fraud, misdirection, and wastefulness of the “war on drugs.” We invite you to share DTN’s “unvarnished truth about the drug war,” through our innovative radio programming, including Century of Lies, Cultural Baggage and 4:20 Drug War News. Dean Becker & Doug […]

New York Daily News editorial today: End the war on pot: We welcome the push to legalize and regulate marijuana After many decades of treating as a crime the personal possession and use of a drug that is a negligible threat to public safety, New York is awakening to the folly of — and racial […]

I’ve been away from the couch for a bit, as I somehow managed to significantly pulverize the bones in my left leg just from falling off a bicycle. I’m home now, trying to figure out how to do everything in a wheelchair with an extended leg brace (the only other option is standing on one […]

Ending the war on drugs: Making the case for regulation of drug markets in Latin America and beyondA workshop organized by Transform DrugPolicy Foundation and MéxicoUnido Contra la Delincuencia as part of The International DrugPolicy Reform Conference 2013Join us to learn and share experiences on how to meaningfully engage with the drug policy reform debate, […]

Transformand MUCD were pleased to launch the latest publication from our joint Latin American Programme for Drug Policy Reform in Mexico City yesterday.‘Ending the War on Drugs: How to win the debate in Latin America' is the product of a series of workshops and consultations with experts across the region, and builds on Transform's 2007 book […]

Drug War Facts

Main

Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century. That’s the age of the oldest article in the archive of the Media Awareness Project. Dated January 1990, this initial clipping hailed from the San Francisco Chronicle and concerned the emerging AIDS epidemic.

Twenty years. One fifth of a century. That is age of DrugSense, the 501(c)(3) non-profit that operates MAP.

Over the last two decades, DrugSense/MAP volunteers have meticulously built the archive to a quarter of a million – yes, 250,000! – newspaper, magazine and web articles on all aspects of drug policy, both in the United States and worldwide. A strategic, timely and highly respected resource, the MAP archive charts the course of this evolving public policy and tells the story of medical cannabis, needle exchange, asset forfeiture and the other topics it covers through an easily accessible and fully searchable database.

For a decade, the drug news bot has continually spidered the web for the latest breaking drug-policy related news. Now, the 1,000 drug -related articles the bot analyzes each day can be at your fingertips, fast with the Bot android app.

Drug Policy News Feeds

The Bot app knows all about the drug news bot’s many topics, tags, and related search terms (the news bot’s “concepts”). Choose from over 450 illegal drug and drug-policy topics, and have Bot bring the news to you.

You can choose news feeds from narrow topics of interest (cannabis, 2ci,opioid, …) or from broad categories of interest (drugwar propaganda, drug_czar, narcotic, prohibitionist, etc.) Select concepts using the Bot app’s built-in concept (topic tree) browser, or from an index. Or, if you like, add your own news feeds, from (RSS) sources you choose.

If you want, the Bot app will update newsfeeds you desire automatically. The app can (optionally) notify you when something new has arrived on a feed.

Play Bot Podcasts

The newsbot site produces many drug-policy related podcasts, every day. The Bot app makes listening to Bot’s podcasts easy.

Analyze Drug War Rhetoric

The Bot app makes it easy to spot drug warrior rhetoric and propaganda. Using the app’s text analysis feature, paste (or enter) in some questionable drug-war text, and Bot will analyze the text for you.

Augment Your Drug-Policy Reality

Using the Bot app’s “Analyze Camera” feature, you can even point your
android camera at some text, and Bot will analyze text it sees, and tell
you the results.

For 70 years, we’ve been taught that marijuana has no accepted
medical use and that its high potential for abuse demands absolute
prohibition. Medical research has been nearly impossible since
obtaining the substance for legitimate studies is restricted by the
federal government.

But for a moment, forget the anti-drug ads of stoned teenagers
passing the bong and click instead on the National Library of
Medicine’s website, “Pubmed.gov.” Look under “breast cancer and
cannabinoid” and you will find studies in scientific journals like
Breast Cancer Research and Treatment that should warrant immediate
action: “Our data demonstrate the efficacy of CBD in pre-clinical
models of breast cancer. The results have the potential to lead to
the development of novel non-toxic compounds for the treatment of
breast cancer metastasis…”

A study in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics says, “These results
indicate that CB1 and CB2 receptors could be used to develop novel
therapeutic strategies against breast cancer growth and metastasis.”
And this from the journal Molecular Cancer: “these results provide a
strong preclinical evidence for the use of cannabinoid-based
therapies for the management of ErbB2-positive breast cancer.” What’s
more, this basic research also extols the safety of potential
cannabinoid therapies.

The science behind these studies finds that the human body contains
its own internal system interrelated with molecules in the cannabis
plant–AKA marijuana. A neurological signaling structure called the
endocannabinoid system is now known to govern numerous bodily
processes like appetite, pain, and even the birth of new brain cells.
Cannabinoid receptors, called CB1 and CB2, are located in various
cell membranes and activated by the body’s own cannabinoid molecules
(endocannabinoids), as well as those unique to the cannabis plant
(THC, CBD) and synthetically-derived cannabinoids like MarinolRegistered .

And now, the latest research is proving that cannabinoids, as part of
this bodily system, play a mitigating role in breast cancer.

Breast cancer is a frightening diagnosis that will confront about 1
in 8 American women this year. Some 40,000 will die from it. An
unusual lump in a breast can grow through four increasingly incurable
stages and sometimes into other tissue. Therapies involve invasive
surgery, heavy radiation, and toxic chemotherapy. Current anti-cancer
drugs may kill cancer cells, but they also destroy non-cancerous
tissue and damage heart muscle. Intractable nausea and vomiting
comprise just one side effect. The disease may be worse than the cure
but the cure can also kill.

But suppose some scientist has just come out of the jungle with an
unknown plant that holds this much promise. It would be featured in
the nightly news and on the front page of every newspaper. Well, we
now have before us scientific clues that seem to point toward a
revolution in breast cancer treatment, yet the government still
manages to bury this amazing discovery.

Why? Politics. The “Devil Weed” has always been a favorite target for
tough-on-crime politicians. Over the decades, they have assembled a
labyrinth of governmental agencies with multi-billion dollar budgets
that enforce marijuana laws, ignore the science, thwart clinical
research–and constantly reinforce anti-pot stereotypes.

Victoria City Councillor and Vancouver Island Compassion Society
founder Philippe Lucas has had his share of life experiences. Lucas
was exposed to hepatitis C through the tainted blood supply at age
12, but the condition was only diagnosed in 1995, the same year that
his father committed suicide. “Sometimes life makes choices for us,
and with the benefit of a little longevity we can see that even the
most adverse event or situation can lead to some positive outcomes,”
says Lucas, whose personal experiences with medical cannabis led him
to conduct a number of research projects on this topic over the last 15 years.

Graduating with a Master of Arts in Studies in Policy and Practice-an
interdisciplinary graduate program in the Faculty of Human and Social
Development aimed at those involved in social activism, human
services and community work-has provided an opportunity to “deepen
the theoretical underpinnings that form the base of progressive
reform efforts, particularly in the area of drug policy,” says Lucas.

Recipient of the 2007 UVic Blue and Gold award for community
contributions, Lucas has worked towards raising awareness on social
issues such as homelessness, drug policy reform and food security.
Currently a research affiliate and board member with the Centre for
Addictions Research of BC at UVic, Lucas says, “I have a passion for
work and research around progressive social change towards the
legitimization of a patient-centered, community-based approach to
medical cannabis.”